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Last Crusade: The Twentieth Century's War for the Sake of the Cross
Spain 1936...
“Crusade” means a war for the sake of the Cross, a war to protect Christian people from persecution and death on account of their faith in Jesus Christ. Everyone has heard of the crusades of the Middle Ages. But few know of the crusade fought for this same purpose in Spain during the early twentieth century.
In just six months of the year 1936, thirteen bishops and nearly seven thousand priests, seminarians, monks, and nuns were martyred in Spain by enemies of Christianity. It was the greatest clerical bloodletting in so short a span of time since the persecutions of the Church by the ancient Roman emperors. Already Pope John Paul II has beatified some two hundred of these martyrs. Tens of thousands of churches, chapels, and shrines in Spain were pillaged or destroyed. In response, faithful Spanish Catholics proclaimed a crusade. Against all odds the crusaders triumphed, and the Church and the Faith in Spain were saved.
This is the story of that crusade, now honored in no other book in print in the English language. Most people who know of the Spanish Civil war do not understand why it was fought or how it was really won. This book will tell you. There is no story like it in the history of the twentieth century.
“Crusade” means a war for the sake of the Cross, a war to protect Christian people from persecution and death on account of their faith in Jesus Christ. Everyone has heard of the crusades of the Middle Ages. But few know of the crusade fought for this same purpose in Spain during the early twentieth century.
In just six months of the year 1936, thirteen bishops and nearly seven thousand priests, seminarians, monks, and nuns were martyred in Spain by enemies of Christianity. It was the greatest clerical bloodletting in so short a span of time since the persecutions of the Church by the ancient Roman emperors. Already Pope John Paul II has beatified some two hundred of these martyrs. Tens of thousands of churches, chapels, and shrines in Spain were pillaged or destroyed. In response, faithful Spanish Catholics proclaimed a crusade. Against all odds the crusaders triumphed, and the Church and the Faith in Spain were saved.
This is the story of that crusade, now honored in no other book in print in the English language. Most people who know of the Spanish Civil war do not understand why it was fought or how it was really won. This book will tell you. There is no story like it in the history of the twentieth century.
262 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 21, 2025
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About the author
Warren H. Carroll
29 books97 followersDr. Warren H. Carroll was a leading conservative Catholic historian and author, and the founder of Christendom College.
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December 10, 2025
The total number of Catholic priests and religious martyred in the territory of the Republic during the Spanish Civil War was 6,832… — This total included 4,184 diocesan clergy, 2,365 male regular clergy and religious, and 283 nuns, the greatest clerical bloodletting in the entire history of the Christian Church, exceeding by a substantial margin the clerical victims of the French Revolution and of the Communist Revolution in Russia. Within a single week, six Spanish bishops had been martyred. Nothing like it had been seen since the ancient Roman persecution of Diocletian.
In their joint letter "to the whole world" in 1937, the Spanish bishops estimated that twenty thousand churches and chapels out of a total of forty-two thousand in Spain had been destroyed.
These appalling facts and statistics, not now questioned by any serious historian of the Spanish Civil War, are the enduring and irrefutable proof that the Spanish crusade of 1936 was justified and that the dominant elements in the Spanish Republic were as profound, thoroughgoing, and vicious enemies as the Christian Faith has ever met anywhere in all its history.
“When citizens' lives are at the mercy of the first gunman, when the government is incapable of putting an end to this state of affairs, do not pretend that people believe in either legality or democracy; rest assured that they will turn more and more to paths of violence, and we who are not capable of preaching violence nor of profiting from it will gradually be displaced by others, bolder and more violent men who will come to harvest this deep national feeling.” - Gil Robles
History has not been kind to Francisco Franco and his Nationalists, but no one at a safe distance, writing at a safe desk, is in a position to judge men fighting in such a place, against such enemies, in so savage a struggle.
Let him who has met death face to face across the blade of a revolutionary's knife cast the first stone. Blood is thicker than ink.
In their joint letter "to the whole world" in 1937, the Spanish bishops estimated that twenty thousand churches and chapels out of a total of forty-two thousand in Spain had been destroyed.
These appalling facts and statistics, not now questioned by any serious historian of the Spanish Civil War, are the enduring and irrefutable proof that the Spanish crusade of 1936 was justified and that the dominant elements in the Spanish Republic were as profound, thoroughgoing, and vicious enemies as the Christian Faith has ever met anywhere in all its history.
“When citizens' lives are at the mercy of the first gunman, when the government is incapable of putting an end to this state of affairs, do not pretend that people believe in either legality or democracy; rest assured that they will turn more and more to paths of violence, and we who are not capable of preaching violence nor of profiting from it will gradually be displaced by others, bolder and more violent men who will come to harvest this deep national feeling.” - Gil Robles
History has not been kind to Francisco Franco and his Nationalists, but no one at a safe distance, writing at a safe desk, is in a position to judge men fighting in such a place, against such enemies, in so savage a struggle.
Let him who has met death face to face across the blade of a revolutionary's knife cast the first stone. Blood is thicker than ink.
Displaying 1 of 1 review